broke the looking glass
by irnan
Summary: Dean at fourteen was far from the consumate strategist he is today. Ahem.


_This is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** Not this time._

**Broke the lookin' glass**

So maybe Dean miscalculated this little outing a bit.

A little bit. For one thing, ending up in the hospital was never a part of the plan. If he had permitted himself to entertain any vague and hazy ideas about ending up in a bed not his own this evening, he hadn't meant a hospital one.

Not that he'd been entirely sure what he had meant, but Dean is a great believer in learning by doing.

Anyway, there's a hospital bed, and there's no Cornelia. There are a lot of sour-faced nurses, and several aches and pains, and pretty freaky memories of earlier that involve a lot of running, and darkness, and red red eyes staring at him, windows cut into Hell.

And, worst of all, there's a little pile of twisted metal and glass fragments on a cloth spread over his knees: the remnants of Dad's binoculars.

Dean is, not to put too fine a point on it, completely fucked. When Dad sees what's left of the binoculars...

He could argue that it wasn't all his fault – that there were other kids involved. That he wasn't the only one there. But actually... _he_ should have known better. Should have been smarter. Shouldn't have let them bait him – shouldn't have gone in the first place.

It might help if he started at the beginning, which was the school cafeteria, around feeding time. The frenzy was well under way, and Dean was sitting in the back of the mess hall, shovelling down mashed potatoes with something that looked like gravy but probably wasn't. Hank Walsh was making his way over to him, grinning like the Cheshire cat. His followers were grouped around a table on the other side of the hall, watching intently.

Dean hated new schools.

"You game, Winchester?" Hank demanded. Dean couldn't help wondering who'd given him that nickname. Walsh wasn't tall, heavy, old, or dark enough to be a Hank. He was teetering between a Harry and a full-blown Henry, thin and blonde and very pale. (In ten years time, a certain villainous character in a staggeringly popular series of children's books by an English writer would remind Dean very sharply of Hank Walsh.)

There were all sorts of things Dean could have answered. They sat on the very tip of his tongue, begging to jump out and dig his grave for him.

He stomped on them ruthlessly, and shrugged.

Hank sneered. It was a well-known fact at school that the Winchester kid didn't speak if he didn't have to. He barely looked at you unless he had no choice, and as a consequence, people always managed to forget him somehow. Winchester was the quiet kid in the back of the class, the silent one, the last one.

Hank had made a point of remembering him for those very reasons.

"Tell me you're game, or I won't tell you the secret."

_Oh, good. If you won't tell, you've got no reason to hang around here,_ Dean thought.

He kept on eating.

Hank decided that could be taken as acquiescence.

"Bunch of us are going to my Dad's cabin tonight," he said. "Out in the woods?"

_That's where cabins usually are, unless we're talking the on-a-ship kind,_ Dean itched to say.

"We thought you might wanna come along."

_Like I want rabies,_ Dean said silently.

"I mean, everyone's gonna be there. Jesse, Kevin, Fan, Cornelia, Ben..."

Cornelia.

Um.

She was over at Hank's table, of course. Long dark hair and a knowing grin and a really nice... sense of humour. Uh-huh. She was watching him now, one eyebrow hiked up in an obvious challenge, waiting to see how the new boy would react.

"Count me in," Dean said.

Everything went downhill from there.

Dean doesn't want to talk about it. It would have been a bad enough mess even without the Black Dog and the running and the screaming and the getting blamed for everything until some dumb schmuck of a police officer notices that, actually, the kid's telling the truth. There _really was_ a huge savage animal in the woods. See those huge deep tracks in the mud over there?

The upshot of it all is that women are sneaky and mean, Hank's looks are much, much improved by the broken nose he's sporting, and the rest of the kids there don't bear thinking about. At all.

The hospital is flooded with savage artificial lights, and no one in the entire building gives a damn about him. The stench of disinfectant and the white coats take him straight back to Then, when Dad was a mess and Sammy was being examined all the time and the lady with the crayons wanted to know how he felt about everything that had happened, and whether she could help.

Just thinking about her makes Dean angry all over again. _Sure you can help, lady. You can bring me my Mom back, if it's not too much trouble. Thanks very much._

But that was a long time ago. Right now, Dean has bigger problems. Like where his torn, filthy clothes are, and what the police officers outside the door want, and how he's going to get out of here without them seeing, and above all, how he's going to explain to Dad that he broke Dad's best binoculars out in the woods. Dean hadn't even realised they were in the duffel he'd taken with him – he'd just grabbed one out of the car and loaded it up. Sammy was at a sleepover too, and Dad knew about it, had the number and everything, so that had been all right.

It's all too much. He's made an ass of himself in front of a girl he likes, been chased by a Black Dog, accused of everything from JFK's murder to the Fall of Man by a bunch of idiot redneck deputies, dragged off to hospital by some burly paramedic, forced to eat hospital food, talk to a psychiatrist as well as yet more police _and_ he broke Dad's binoculars, and seriously, there are only so many things a guy can take at once.

"Not one of your finer moments, kiddo," Dad says. He has this trick of appearing out of nowhere right beside you. Sam hates it. Dean thinks it's awesome. There's no telling when Dad's going to show up, which conceivably means that he might always be everywhere. Or something.

"I hate girls," Dean says despondently. Dad sits down on the end of the bed and looks over at Cornelia, being petted by her Mom while the police ask questions.

"They're not all bad. Same as boys."

Dean shrugs. He's too tired and angry to be fair. His knees hurt where he tripped and tore them open, his hands are worse. His head is a little woozy, and his chest hurts for no good reason whatsoever.

Dad looks at him silently for a minute. "You know," he says at last, "I have a speech, actually. A whole long, lovely speech about being careless, and preparing yourself, and knowing your enemy. You knew I was after a Black Dog. You knew it was out in the woods someplace. But, Dean..." and then Dad's hand is on his shoulder, pressure telling Dean to _look at me, kid_.

"Right now, I'm too relieved you're still alive to do any yelling."

"I broke your binoculars," Dean said miserably.

Dad sighs. "Dude, they're kinda replaceable. I get the impression it hasn't sunk in on you yet that You. Are. Not."

Dean squirms uncomfortably.

"I mean it," Dad says.

Dean nods. The sick weight of guilt and shame in his gut is beginning to dissipate, slowly. "Hey, Dad. Don't tell Sam. About me being an idiot."

"It's not like that's a state secret, kid," Dad says, smiling a bit.

Dean grins at him. "You did yell at someone, though. Right? I heard yelling."

"Just the police," Dad says. "It's outta my system for the minute. Your turn might even wait till tomorrow."

When Dean's turn does come, the broken binoculars don't get mentioned once.

They move, of course, not long after what will later come to be known as The Sleepover Night Black Dog Disaster. Sam's enchanted by the new place, but then, Sam's enchanted by every new place.

Dean is only too happy to leave the last place behind. The new one, he figures, can only get better.

The other thing he figures is... if people are going to keep on getting him into trouble like that for no good reason, he'd better start enjoying it while he can. Now that he's old enough that people (read: police) are starting to take him seriously, to notice him, Dean figures the safety and anonymity of being "that silent scruffy kid in the corner" isn't going to last much longer.

On Monday morning, he saunters into school in torn jeans and a Nirvana shirt, and smirks at the prettiest girl in the assembly hall like he totally knows what he's doing.


End file.
